How Love Happened in 10 Steps
by atoizzard
Summary: A two-part drabble based on the prompt: how Carol and Daryl fell in love. Written in the style of prose-poetry.


**How Love Happened in 10 Steps - Part One**

_A/N: Someone suggested that I post this as a one-shot as they were having issues viewing it in my other series "10 Things", so here it is. I would love your feedback. Thank you. _

_(Prompt from xXCarolutionXx)_

**First: **He knew something was different by the way she looked at him. He didn't see judgment in the eyes of the quiet woman. It typically took about 30 seconds for people to estimate his worth (he knew it wasn't much). But she… She looked at him like his worth wasn't the sum of the ragged clothes on his back and the way he talked.

**Second: **Was it a compliment? He wouldn't really know since it was a foreign concept to him. "You're every bit as good as them**,**" kept bouncing around in his head. It was that "as" that stuck with him for days. It wasn't pity, he knew well enough how that sounded. He couldn't remember the last time someone used "him" and "good" in the same sentence.

**Third:** Why did she even care? He'd failed at the one thing he wanted to give her. He didn't want to face the loss of her – he couldn't. He didn't want to see the reflection of his failure staring right back at him. So he tried to push her away with a loud mouth and words he knew were sharp as daggers. It wasn't surprising to him then, even in that, he had failed. But this time, for the first time, his failure was not the end. It was the beginning.

**Fourth: **She had to have known that he was seized by loneliness. It held him in comfortable captivity, like a prisoner who no longer felt the sting of his shackles. He stopped doubting her after she freed him from these chains. With her, he was re-learning the meaning of being close, because it had been polluted over the years with the filth of loss, hurt and brokenness.

**Fifth:** He felt no better than the others who had underestimated her. Now he knew her value and was drawn to her. He was around her so much so that he couldn't help but look at her. He stared. Compulsively. His hunter instincts kicked in and looking at her was the only way he knew how to understand. He would memorize her movements and quietly study her. As he was expecting the looming disappointment (that always crashed down on him when he made the mistake of hoping for something better than what he'd always known), he found that instead, he liked everything about her. She had awoken something in him.

**Sixth:** It came back to her eyes. She knew that words were always heavy in his mouth. So they understood each other, spoke to each other with looks, glances and twinkles. It became their language. And they became so fluent in it that they would have conversations without ever having moved their lips.

**Seventh: **She started to fill his dreams. He had thought that maybe it was because her name echoed in his head, regularly, like he'd somehow like it any less if it weren't mentioned there often.

**Eighth:** He didn't deny anymore that he cared for her. She was special, coveted. He relished the contentment that came with her friendship. He figured there was a better word out there to fit what she really was to him but for now, "friend" was good enough.

**Ninth: **Until she was ripped from his life. He felt such pain in his heart that it took him days to realize it was the type he never felt before: heartache. Of all the things he wished he'd said to her, "I love you" was the first. He wasn't scared of love anymore. He had fallen. And it wasn't the all-of-a-sudden or love-at-first-sight type of fall. It was a love that crept up, slow, steady and strong, and it completely consumed him. She had skillfully put his shattered heart back together and carefully returned it to him, signed with her name. How could it then belong to anyone else? With the world going to hell around them, he had found a someone.

**Tenth:** No. His someone found him. It wasn't always her because there was no always before her. She was the beginning of his always. And occasionally when he is deep in the forest, he thinks about the irony of it all. When the world was good and happy and safe, he was invisible, trapped in its darkest corners where normal people never ventured. But now, with the world drowning in the stench of death and rot, a light had shone through the dark corner he had called home. A light so bright, it brought to life the deadness inside of him. A light that came… in the form of a rose.


End file.
